What to Do When You Know Something Needs to Change but You're Not Sure What

When you know something needs to change but can't name it, the most useful first step is to step away from the noise and get present — through silence, journaling, or a short retreat — so the real issue can surface. Clarity rarely arrives while you're managing daily chaos; it comes when you stop trying to solve the future and pay attention to the present moment. This applies whether the unease is about your work, a relationship, or yourself. The discomfort is information, and giving it quiet, undistracted attention is how you finally hear what it's saying.

Ellen Williams welcomes Judy K. Herman, CEO of Relationship Wellness, a psychotherapist, author, and retreat facilitator, for a conversation about the kind of pause that rearranges a life. Judy's turning point came in her late forties, sitting in a graduate classroom, homeschooling four children inside a troubled marriage and sensing that something had to change — starting with her. What she did next, and what it taught her about growth, became the foundation of her work helping others transform.

Get Present Before You Try to Get Answers

Judy knew something was wrong long before she could name it. Years of marriage retreats and therapists hadn't cracked it. So she made a decision: something had to change, and that something started with her.

"Once you see something, you can't go backwards and unsee it."

She saved for a year, then traveled from the South to a retreat center in Canada for four days of near-silence. She arrived wanting an answer to one question — should she leave the marriage? — but her spiritual director encouraged her to put that on the back burner and simply live in the present moment. Walking the trails and journaling, being intentional about the present, she got the clarity she came for. It changed the arc of her life.

The Risk of Growth

One of Judy's most original ideas reframes why change feels so hard. She breaks it into a formula: air to breathe, then Awareness, Intentionality, and the Risk of growth.

"We don't know what's on the other side of doing the things we should do, because we've never done them before. But it's a risk of growth."

Writing her book was her own example. She feared her clients would question her, worried she might cause harm or even lose her license. She did it anyway — and it opened doors she could never have predicted, drawing people who found her through the book. Growth, she argues, always means stepping into an unknown outcome. You can only make sense of it looking back; the risk is simply the price of becoming someone new.

Handling Pushback When You Decide to Grow

Any real change invites resistance — often from the people closest to you. Judy has learned to sort that pushback rather than absorb all of it.

"Make a list of the engines in your life, who encourage you to grow — and the anchors, who love you but are fearful for you."

She's blunt that advice from friends and family is usually well-intentioned but not always well-informed: your path, your experience, and your reasons are data they simply don't have. The engines push you toward the next level you can't yet see; the anchors, out of love, want to keep you safe from getting hurt. Both come from care. The work is to feel where there's genuine weight in the pushback and where it's really just someone else's fear talking — and a reminder that you can't do for another person what only they can do for themselves.

The One Thing

Real change starts with one honest admission — that the thing that needs to change might be you. Judy K. Herman found her clarity not by forcing a decision, but by getting quiet enough to hear what her own life was telling her. Pay attention to your body's signals, build a small daily habit of pausing, and trust that once you truly see something, you can't unsee it.